and so we rise in darkness
and let our bodies move
without the blare of light.
The house is still and we
are somehow changed
by stillness, changed
by dark. As if we’ve
grown pads in our feet.
As if we are learning
a new silent language
with our limbs, a language
more graceful, more awake.
We find candles. Find
matches. Let the tiny lights
find us. For a thousand years
in Egypt, they wrote
and rewrote The Book
of Emerging Forth into the Light,
a series of writings we somehow came
to call The Book of the Dead.
All the spells were written
to help the dead person journey
through hostile forces
into the afterlife.
And this morning, we
are our only obstacles.
Still, the candles
are a bit like spells,
guiding us with their brilliant ink
toward dawn. There
are no warnings, no judgements,
no naming of evil spirits.
Only this new language
to learn with its syntax
of carbon, it etymologies
of shadow, its phonemes
of coming light.
